Ride the World's Fastest Lift to the Top of the World's Tallest Building
You step into an elevator at the base of the Burj Khalifa, and the doors close on the lobby. When they open again, you are on the 124th floor, looking down on a city that has become a grid of towers and a coastline fading into haze. The tower rises 829.8 m (2,722 ft) above Downtown Dubai, and it has held the title of the world's tallest building since its full inauguration in 2011. Its elevators are the world's longest-travel installations, running 504 m (1,654 ft) inside a rod at the top of the building, so the ride itself is part of the experience. Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the tower was built as the centrepiece of the 2 km² Downtown Dubai development at the "First Interchange" along Sheikh Zayed Road. Even if you have seen it in photographs a hundred times, standing at its foot and then riding up through it is a different thing entirely.
Two Observation Decks, a Spiral of Setbacks and a Spire of Steel
There are two observation decks. The first sits on the 124th floor; the second is on the 148th floor, high in the top 37 stories, which otherwise hold corporate office suites. Between them lies the building's distinctive form: as the tower rises from its base, 27 setbacks spiral upward, narrowing the cross-section and creating outdoor terraces along the way, while the central core emerges at the top and is sculpted into the spire. That spire is built from more than 4,000 tonnes of structural steel, and its central pinnacle pipe alone weighs 350 tonnes.
Look closely at the design and you will see its sources. The geometry draws on Islamic architecture of the region, such as the Great Mosque of Samarra, and on the shape of a regional desert flower; the Y-shaped floor plan was devised to optimise residential and hotel space. The building is mixed-use: a boutique hotel occupies the lower stories, condominiums rise above it, and the top floors are given over to offices and the upper deck. In the residential lobby, Jaume Plensa's installation World Voices hangs above shallow water pools — 196 hand-crafted cymbals on slender stainless steel tubes, with ceiling-mounted equipment dripping water onto them to create an ambient soundscape. SOM curated more than 500 works by local and international artists across the building, so the art is worth a few minutes of your time before or after you go up.
Time Your Visit for the Light, and Give the Tower Half a Day
The views from the decks change completely with the light, so the hour you choose matters as much as the ticket. Go up in late afternoon and you can watch the city shift from daylight to dusk from above; go at night and you see the tower's own light and sound show, staged on the building itself. Dubai's summers are hot, and the cladding system was designed to withstand them, but for comfortable wandering around Downtown Dubai, the cooler months are kinder. Allow half a day rather than an hour: the observation decks are the draw, but the lobby art, the base of the tower and the surrounding development reward a slower pace.
The highlight is the upper deck on the 148th floor, where the small floor plates and the height combine to make the city below feel abstract. If you only do one thing, do that. And if you want to eat at altitude, At.mosphere on the 122nd floor is the world's highest restaurant.
Downtown Dubai at Your Feet: Mall, Lake and Parkland
The tower stands within a development that includes the Dubai Mall, the 12-hectare artificial Burj Khalifa Lake, nine hotels including The Address Downtown Dubai, and 3 hectares of parkland. You can spend the rest of your day without leaving the district: shop in the mall, walk the lakeside, and look back up at the tower from ground level, where the full height is easiest to grasp. The wider city is within reach too — an abra ride on Dubai Creek, a desert safari, or a helicopter tour that takes in the Burj Khalifa from the air are all part of the Dubai repertoire.
Start With the Elevator
Book your observation deck time before you arrive, choose your hour for the light you want, and build the rest of the day around Downtown Dubai. The tower is the centrepiece of the city's modern skyline, and the ride up is the simplest way to understand how far Dubai has come. Start planning your visit, and let the elevator do the rest.